Composer and ambient experimentalist William Basinski has announced a new box set reissue of his classic ambient work The Disintegration Loops. Dubbed the Arcadia Archive Edition, it features the entire five-hour suite which was edited down to a single CD for its original release. Remastered for this box from the original recordings by Josh Bonati, it’s available as an 8-LP or four-CD set, with restored artwork, and a new foreword by Laurie Anderson that’s housed in a heavyweight, case-wrapped box. It’s out November 7 via Temporary Residence LTD. Preorder yours.
If you’re unfamiliar, The Disintegration Loops features tape loop recordings that he let play until the cracked, lost their magnetic surface and eventually fell apart. The project was finished the morning of September 11, 2001 at Basinski’s loft studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and became an elegy to that day, with photos he took of the World Trade Center as cover art.
“These dissolving sounds, this emptying space, has gained my complete confidence,” Laurie Anderson writes in her forward. “They are taking me somewhere. I am willingly following these sounds, becoming more and more transparent.”
You can watch a trailer for the box set below.
The Disintegration Loops — Arcadia Archive Edition
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8. dlp 1.2
9. dlp 1.3